O.C. Baltic-Americans Are Glad Bush ‘Really Listened’ : Foreign affairs: Lithuania boosters from Mission Viejo, Fullerton were part of a delegation in Washington advocating independence for the Baltic states.

It was heady stuff for real estate salesman Anthony Mazeika of Mission Viejo and former third-grade teacher Angela Nelsas of Fullerton.

On Wednesday, they sat in the elegant Roosevelt Room at the White House, drank rich coffee and talked for more than an hour with President Bush and some of his top advisers.

Mazeika and Nelsas, both born in Lithuania, were part of a 14-member Baltic-American delegation that met with Bush to advocate independence for their native land and for the other Baltic states.

“We were there to give information and make comments,” Mazeika said in a phone call from his hotel room in Washington. “I cannot predict what Baker (Secretary of State James A. Baker III) and Bush are going to do, but I would expect that there is going to be a process here to help mold a change in the direction of helping Baltic states achieve independence.”

Agreed Nelsas: “We were very frustrated up until now that we have not been able to meet with the President.” Wednesday’s session “was a very good meeting,” she said. “We didn’t really get the promise”--that is, from Bush about recognizing Lithuania--”but we felt he really listened.”

Nelsas and Mazeika are two of this country’s leading Lithuanian-American spokesmen.

Mazeika, a co-founder of the Baltic American Freedom League, has participated in previous White House discussions on the Baltic states. The league began in 1981 in Southern California and since developed into a national organization with more than 2,200 members, he said.

During the Reagan Administration, Mazeika said, he met with Reagan and his advisers on issues that included lobbying for Baltic Freedom Day, which recognizes June 14, 1941, as the day of the Soviet invasion of the Baltic countries.

Nelsas is president of the Baltic-American Freedom League and of the Lithuanian-American Community National Council, an international organization.

Three years ago, the freedom league was fighting small battles, such as a Costa Mesa proposal that would have established a sister city relationship with Melitopol, a Soviet city 200 miles north of the Black Sea. The city eventually rejected Melitopol, in part because the league opposed it because of the Soviet Union’s human rights record. In recent months, however, as Lithuania has pushed for independence from the Soviet Union and nationalists in Estonia and Latvia have followed suit, Lithuanian-Americans have been lobbying Bush and his advisers, asking that they recognize the Baltic states.

Mazeika said Wednesday that Bush’s willingness to listen is important because of the message that sends to Soviet leaders.

“The issue for Mr. Gorbachev to learn here is that what happens in Lithuania is a very important domestic issue in the United States . . . . Many people feel the principle of democracy must be upheld.”

Nelsas said she and five other Baltic-Americans from the delegation are to meet with the National Security Council today.